The Edge of the Universe
by BetaTurtle
Summary: Before the Geth, before the Reapers, before the war, there was Mindoir.


Behind the trees, a pale sun was spreading out across the curving plain of _casaka_ that stretched from the forest down about twenty acres to the river. The leaves had just turned a molted brown like the new feathers of a baby bird. They would be ready for a harvest soon, the largest anyone had ever seen.

It had taken twenty years of tilling and fertilizing, of draught, bugs, watering, success, and failure to turn the soil of Mindoir into profitable crop-land. The early colonists had attempted rotations of wheat and soy, the familiar grain products of earth, but after several failed attempts, the settlers had come around to the local vegetation, breeding it until it had become thicker and meatier, until it had lost its natural metallic flavor and become something much more palatable, if not recognizable. The local children pulled at the early shoots and chewed at them until their mouths turned purple with juice.

She gnawed on her own stalk, eyes closed, back pressed up against the bark of a tall _joa_, arms clasping her bb-gun, a replica of the Storm II her father used for hunting, and listened. They were coming. She could hear them rustling about through the leaves, tiptoeing across the new tilled soil, forgetting to measure their breathes, pushing at the hard leaves instead of ducking below them, rustling like pyjaks. She smiled to herself. Amateurs. She stilled her own breath and tried to pinpoint a location the way her brother had taught her. One at 5 o'clock, the other at 8. They were trying to ambush her. She readied herself and crouched down low, counting as their rustling got closer, waiting for them to finally push their way out of the field and give her a clean shot. A few hours ago she might have fired wildly into the bushes, hoping the spread would down one of them before they knew what was happening. But that was a strategy she couldn't afford. She was down to her last few clips. She had to make them count.

She heard her opponents take their final steps through the crops, heard the rustling stop, heard her opportunity arrive. She took a breath and tied to still her racing heart. She raised her gun, whipped around, and darted out from behind the tree, firing into the oncoming forces. The first few shots caught the figure at her left in the gut, and he let out an anguished cry, doubling over to clutch at his stomach and falling to the dirt. The second figure, was gaining ground, firing wildly in her direction. His missed shots dug into the ground, shooting mud and dirt up into her face, blocking her view. She ducked back behind her tree, stealing a few seconds to pop in another clip and give her opponent time to duck behind cover. She spat the pulpy leaf she'd been chewing out onto the ground and rubbed it in with the toe of her boot. She knew he wouldn't risk an ambush; he was too nervous, too young, and too afraid of the pain. She had time now. A quick peek from behind her tree confirmed that he had stationed himself behind a boulder. She could barely see the top of his makeshift helmet, bobbing up and down as he heaved, trying to catch his breath. She smiled to herself. A standoff. She pulled the scope up to her eye and positioned the barrel comfortably in the crook of a branch. Letting out a long, slow breathe, she put her finger to the trigger, waiting.

A sudden pop came from behind her, and a pellet clipped her cover. Bark flung into her eyes, and her shot went wide, flying uselessly into the evening air. A second pop flared, and a sharp pain wrenched itself into her shoulder blade, reverberating down into her arm. She gulped down a cry, the tears stinging in the back of her eyes, and cursed. Her lungs burned from the impact, and she let out a dry, rasping cough. From somewhere up above her came a familiar laugh.

"You need to watch your six, Kiddo," her brother said as he clambered down the _joa_, his bb strapped across his back.

She coughed again and stood up. Her lungs felt raw, but there was no way in hell she was letting him see the pain he'd caused her. Instead, she crossed her arms in front of her and shifted her weight onto one hip, glowering. "That's no fair, Shepard," she said. "We agreed, no sniping." He walked up to her, laughing and whacked her on the back a few times. The long muddy stripes he had painted down his forehead had been smudged at some point during the firefight and now looked less like the fierce colony markings of a Turian and more like someone had shoved his face into the dirt.

"Like hell, we said no sniping," he said. "You're just a sore loser."

The boy she'd shot had gotten up and was walking towards them, a hand still clutched at his stomach. "That hurt. Why'd you have to go and do something like that for?"

"Stop being a baby, Emory," the girl shot back. She pulled her bb gun close to her chest. "This game is stupid. You're all cheaters."

"Oh, come on," James yelled from behind his rock. "It's not like you didn't pull that pyjak trap on us near the lake."

"We shook on it, assholes. No hollering, nothing past the fence, and no sniping," she said. She stared pointedly at her older brother who threw up his hands and grinned out the side of his mouth.

"I didn't shake on nothing," Emory said, mostly to himself. James threw a clod of dirt at his head, missing widely.

She shot a withering glare at the two younger boys and began walking towards their farmhouse. They had cheated, but she should have known better, should have expected it.

She had been playing war games since she was ten and prided herself in her ability. The tactics, the crack of a bullet as it rushed passed her, the rush of adrenaline when a maneuver went exactly as planned, it all made sense to her. She was good, great even, but Shepard was better. As the oldest, he had practically invented the game, creating tactical diversions and sinister plots with the neighborhood children, dragging first her, then James, and finally Emory into the mix as they aged into it. He'd taught her how to hold a gun, how to scout for enemies, how to set a trap. For six years she had been running through that forest, finding her marks, and for six years, no matter what side she played on-Turian or Human-she never shot him. Not once. Her hands were clenched at her sides as she stomped up the path, thinking back on her mistakes, cursing herself for yet another error. Of course Shepard would be above her. He was always above her, two heads taller, better, stronger, faster, smarter. He always knew her weak spots, knew how to make her loose focus, knew how to beat her at whatever game they played. They were all Shepards, of course, but he was _the_ Shepard. The golden child, the prodigy. He was going to get off this rock and see the world. Make the family proud. She hated him for it.

The dirt had become soft and muddy with the evening dew, sucking at the bottoms of her boots and slowing her progress. Her mother would be upset. Between the new bruises, the hour, and the mud that had somehow embedded itself into her coveralls, there was no way she was getting through the night without a lecture: she was getting too old for this; she was getting to be a lady; she had to start being more serious; why couldn't she be like the other girls. The lectures never hurt her so much as the truth behind them. She was going to be a farmer, just like her mother and father, just like her younger brothers, and once she was, there was no point in knowing how to handle a firearm or flank an enemy. No point in learning how to aim for the chest, not the head, or how to keep her gun clean. She would stay on Mindoir, waiting for holos from her older brother and the stories of adventure they would bring; she would be safe and quiet forever.

Shepard was leaving for Alliance training next year. He'd already signed up and was just waiting for his birthday before packing off. Her family had protested, but even she could see it was for show. Everything about Shepard looked out of place on their little colony. He was too tall, too pale, and too restless. While her younger brothers had always loved helping with the crops, driving the tractor, setting pipelines and monitoring water flow, Shepard seemed itchy, forgetting his chores in order to push toy starships through the air. And yet, her parents never seemed disappointed in Shepard. They saw the same life for him that everyone else did, and loved him for it.

She shook the thoughts from her head and snatched up another _casaka_ leaf, popping it into her mouth. The taste was still coppery, almost bitter, but the chewing was relaxing. The night had chilled, and she started to notice her breathe manifesting in front of her like the tobacco from her father's cigarettes. Up ahead, the house had flickered into view. The lights were already on, and the windows stood almost garish against the dark background of stars and planets and vast pockets of universe that had crept up behind it. She slowed to watch for the blinking lights of starships, allowing each of her brothers to pass her in a cool puff of air. First James, then Emory.

A hand came up to rest on her shoulder. She didn't turn, but let it sit there, unmoving. "Your mouth's all purple" Shepard said.

She scrunched up her face, but said nothing.

"God, I hate that stuff," he continued. "I can never understand why we spent twenty years and millions of dollars to grow plants on a rock in the middle of nowhere. I just don't get it. It's idiotic."

A weird sense of pride and anger reared itself up in the back of her brain. She spat.

"I know that mom and dad have been doing this forever, James and Em like it well enough, but at a certain point I wonder why anyone would choose this when there's so much else out there." He waved a hand at the universe and looked down at her. "You know?"

"Yah, us country bumpkins are real idiots for wanting to stay here where it's nice and quiet and we don't get shot at. Super idiotic," she said.

He looked at her, eyes squinted slightly and head cocked to the side. "You don't mean that," he said. "And don't even pretend like you do. I've known you your whole life, Kiddo. Don't bullshit me."

"I'm sorry that not everyone can be perfect like you, Shepard," she said, coldly. She avoided his gaze, choosing instead to focus on her breath as it hung in the air. He ran a hand over his hair.

"You see that star over there?" he asked, pointing. "That's Sol. Earth and Mars and Venus. There's Grissom, Century, Maskim Xul. And, way back there beyond the Far Rim is the edge of the galaxy." He pointed vaguely and with too much speed for her to see anything properly. "Not the edge of the universe. The edge of the galaxy."

"I know all this," she said, spitting again. He was teasing her. They'd been taught the star systems, the homeworlds, the solar systems in school. Out beyond their solar system were thousands of other solar systems, whole galaxies, Argos Rho, the Kepler Verge, even a tiny blinking Citadel. She suddenly felt as if the vacuum of space was pulling at her, taunting her with vast lightyears of distance, ages and eons of time, reminding her of her smallness, her weakness. There was a time when she would have tried to reached out and grab at the stars, pull them towards her own orbit, but that was a long time ago. Instead, she crossed her hands over her chest and stared silent. Shepard would see it all, and she would be stuck here, listening to his stories. She tried to shrug his hand off her shoulder, but he didn't budge.

"There is no edge to the universe, Kiddo. It's just too big. No edge, just a whole lot of space and a whole lot of stars." He looked at her. "Why would you ever want to stay here, when you know you could be out there?"

"You don't know…" she started, angrily, but he just laughed.

"You're not listening to me," he said. He took his hand from her shoulder and started walking ahead of her. "It's a great big galaxy out there. There's room for more than one Shepard."

She shook her head and watched as he walked away, the shadow of a low-flying starship obscuring his figure briefly.

Once the tramping of his feet had receded and the brown of his hunting jacket had begun to blend in with the night sky, she raised her bb-gun to her eye one last time and shot him. Right in the shoulder blade.


End file.
